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CTV News
4 days ago
- Climate
- CTV News
'Beautiful conditions' for your Thursday
London Watch CTV London Meteorologist Julie Atchison has the details on your 'picture perfect summer day' Thursday
Washington Post
10-08-2025
- Climate
- Washington Post
Full moon adds perfection to perfect day
A bright full moon — completely and perfectly full — shone over Washington in the early morning Saturday, seeming to announce and to symbolize the varied natural pleasures and satisfactions of what seemed for practical purposes to be a perfect summer day. Different standards for perfection obviously exist, but Saturday, in its warm but not hot temperatures, in the scarcely sullied blue of its skies, in its almost startling lack of any semblance of humidity, seemed at least to be without obvious meteorological flaw or fault. Dissenters and detractors may exist, of course, but it seemed difficult to discern any clear cause for dissatisfaction with the sights to be seen in Saturday's skies, the sweetness of the air, and the beguiling breezes that all formed part of the atmospheric bounty bestowed on the nation's capital. For example, was the 84-degree high temperature too warm? It was five degrees below the normal, or average high temperature in D.C. for Aug. 9. It was also 18 degrees below the fairly frightful 102 degree record set for Saturday's date 95 years ago. It was warmer than Friday, it is true, but only by two degrees and Friday was a truly fine day as well. In cataloguing Saturday's natural assets, attention must be paid to the morning's low temperature. That was 65 degrees. It is low for a morning in summer in the city. Encomiums could be heaped upon it. It was cool, refreshing, invigorating. It was seven degrees below the normal low temperature for the date. It was only eight degrees above the lowest temperature on record for Aug. 9 in Washington. It was far cooler than every morning in July. The 65-degree low differed little from the cool temperature just before 4 a.m. that provided a comfortable environment for the awed contemplation of the full moon that shone above the city at 3:55 a.m. That, according to the authorities on lunar behavior, was the minute when the moon attained its once-monthly peak of round and radiant perfection. At that moment, the moon was not merely almost full or nearly full, but it was absolutely, geometrically and astronomically full. And it could be patiently and comfortably watched about one-third of the way up in the southwestern sky, its brightness seemingly undiminished by cloud or haze. The view of it was not blocked by roofline or treetop. Sometimes that moment, the instant that the moon on its near-monthly orbit of Earth becomes full, occurs when the moon passes behind an obstacle, or a cloud, or has not yet risen here, or after it has set, or on a frigid morning that discourages leisurely viewing, or on one so steamy as to have a similar effect. But on Saturday morning, the moon was clearly and brightly visible in the sky above a largely silent city, and everything seemed to join to create a perfect moment for fastening the eye on it, and opening the mind to its link with generations of history, and to a renewed sense of its unvarying wonders and its enduring and compelling mystery. The moment was perfect, just as could be said of the day that would follow.
